The microchip crisis: three months waiting for a washing machine or four for a game console
Microchips are a very important part of technological products. The shortage and rising prices of raw materials is having serious consequences: products take months to arrive and are more expensive.
At this time it is practically impossible to acquire a next-generation game console like the Play Station 5 or the latest XBox. Looking ahead to Christmas, anyone who hasn't requested it for months "is going to have a very difficult time," assures Francisco Castillejas, from Tecnoconsolas, in Seville. Acquiring this product can take up to three months to wait, while buying a washing machine reaches four.
In the same sense, he explains that when it comes to repairing laptops, or any computer material, you have to resort to second-hand or even scrap, because the little material that "is in stock is being taken by the automobile industry," says Castillejas .
The technological and automotive sectors are not the only ones that are suffering from the wait due to the lack of the famous chips. It has already reached home appliances: "We are experiencing many delays in merchandise orders," explains Samira Bakur.
In his home appliance business in Malaga, there are growing complaints from customers who are missing a product that they have been waiting for for a long time. For first-timers, they can't even give you a date on when they'll get what they want.
They calculate losses of between 30 and 40 percent while they manage to dodge the potholes of the day to day with what they have in stock. "It is no longer the fifteen days that the manufacturer used to give, now they no longer know how to say an exact date," says Juan Manuel Heredia, manager of another electrical appliance store in Malaga. They take what they can and hope that a crisis that affects more and more people will soon be solved.
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